On The Road Blog

MLT Japan 1999

This should be a real treat for fans of Michael Landau.

In 1999 The Michael Landau Trio went to Japan for a series of shows, all at the same venue, Club Goodman, in Tokyo.I went along as “staff videographer”, and got some amazing footage.These never before seen clips are taken from a 87 minute “movie” I produced when we returned from the trip. I believe the only people to have seen this stuff is the band, myself and a few friends.

This is the only time you will see footage of this particular band in a “produced” multi-camera setting with decent audio quality. The band put on great shows, and the Japanese fans were always into the music and very enthusiastic as you will see.The Austin Powers movie was big at the time,which we all loved, so there are a lot of AP references throughout the clips!

Technical Notes:
The MLT Live in Japan 99 movie was shot with a Canon L2 Hi8 video camcorder. This was a cool machine for the time with interchangeable lenses,semi-pro feel with kind of a film look, and many other great features. The video footage was not assembled in a computer. This was all done with multiple (4) Sony Hi8 players connected to a stand-alone Videonics video mixer and separate edit controller.The movie was a nightmare to assemble, with over 100 events in the controller’s “edit decision list”. And any time there was a problem (and there were many) the edit controller assembly would freeze, and I would have to start over. I would have to sit and watch the assembly process, because often source tapes would have to be swapped at various points in the time-line. And it all had to be done in real time! All in all it took about 40 hours to put together a finished “master”.These days, with imovie or Final Cut Pro, this kind of stuff is a no-brainer, and is relatively easy to do. I have actually put the entire “film” into imovie and cleaned up some edits. The footage has a raw “dirty” look to it that I love. I especially like the “Oh My” montage. That took some time, as video and audio were not synced to time-code. Also, note that the performance video multi-camera transitions were done in real time by the club staff, using the same Videonics gear I used to mix the videotapes. Nice work there fellas!

If you watch these clips in order, you will get the “feel” I intended for the movie, but in somewhat edited form. So, in honor of the 10 year anniversary of these shows, Check out “The Michael Landau Trio Japan 1999″.

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